ANXIETY; America the Anxious

By RUTH WHIPPMAN

Published: September 23, 2012

As soon as an American baby is born, its parents enter into an implicit contractual obligation to answer any question about their hopes for their tiny offspring's future with the words ''I don't care, as long as he's happy'' (the mental suffix ''at Harvard'' must remain unspoken).

Happiness in America has become the overachiever's ultimate trophy. A vicious trump card, it outranks professional achievement and social success, family, friendship and even love. Its invocation can deftly minimize others' achievements (''Well, I suppose she has the perfect job and a gorgeous husband, but is she really happy?'') and take the shine off our own.

This obsessive, driven, relentless pursuit is a characteristically American struggle -- the exhausting daily application of the Declaration of Independence. But at the same time this elusive MacGuffin is creating a nation of nervous wrecks.

As a Brit living in the United States, I am acutely aware of the cultural difference between attitudes to happiness here and at ''home.'' Thomas Jefferson knew what he was doing when he wrote that ''pursuit of happiness'' line, a perfectly delivered slap in the face to his joy-shunning oppressors across the pond. The British are generally uncomfortable around the subject and, as a rule, don't subscribe to the happy-ever-after. It's not that we don't want to be happy, it just seems somehow embarrassing to discuss it and demeaning to chase it, like calling someone moments after a first date to ask them if they like you.

Cynicism is the British shtick. When happiness does come our way, it is entirely without effort, as unmeritocratic as a hereditary peerage. By contrast, in America, happiness is work. Intense, nail-biting work, slogged out in motivational seminars and therapy sessions, meditation retreats and airport bookstores. For the left there's yoga, for the right, there's Jesus. For no one is there respite.

I live in California, where the Great American Search for Happiness has its headquarters. The notice board of the cafe where I write offers a revolving loop of different paths to bliss: Maum Meditation, TransDance, Chod Training and, most oddly, the drinking of wolf colostrum. Customers jot down the phone numbers earnestly, although statistically they'd be better off joining the Republican Party.

The people taking part in ''happiness pursuits,'' as a rule, don't seem very happy. At the one and only yoga class I attended, shortly after arriving in the United States, the tension and misery in the room were palpable. Which makes sense, because a person who was already feeling happy would be unlikely to waste the sensation in a sweaty room at the Y.M.C.A., voluntarily contorting into uncomfortable positions. The happy person would be more likely to be off doing something fun, like sitting in the park drinking.

Since moving to the States just shy of a year ago, I have had more conversations about my own happiness than in the whole rest of my life. The subject comes up in the park pushing swings alongside a mother I met moments before, with the man behind the fish counter in the supermarket, with my gym instructor and with our baby sitter, who arrives to put our son to bed armed with pamphlets about a nudist happiness retreat in Northern California.

While the British way can be drainingly negative, the American approach to happiness can spur a debilitating anxiety. The initial sense of promise and hope is seductive, but it soon gives way to a nagging slow-burn feeling of inadequacy. Am I happy? Happy enough? As happy as everyone else? Could I be doing more about it? A recipe for neurosis.

Happiness should be serendipitous, a by-product of a life well lived, and pursuing it in a vacuum doesn't really work. This is borne out by a series of slightly depressing statistics. Every year, with remarkable consistency, around 33 percent of Americans report that they are ''very happy.'' It's a fair chunk, but a figure that remains surprisingly constant, untouched by the uptick in Eastern meditation or evangelical Christianity, by Tony Robbins or Gretchen Rubin or attachment parenting. For all the effort Americans are putting into happiness, they are not getting any happier. It's not not surprising, then, that the search itself becomes such a source of anxiety.

So it's probably safe to say that despite the glorious weather and spectacular landscape, the people of California are probably less happy and more anxious than the people of Grimsby. So they may as well stop trying so hard.